


That Massive, Screaming Thing With Wings Of Reaper's Cloth

by Andian



Category: Broken Bride - Ludo (Album)
Genre: Dinosaurs, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:02:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27106906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/pseuds/Andian
Summary: The sunsets are beautiful. It’s a small comfort that some things are the same, even millions of years in the past. 150 million years to be precise. Give or take a few million years and he has become a very giving person recently.
Relationships: Traveler/Bride
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	That Massive, Screaming Thing With Wings Of Reaper's Cloth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phlyarologist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phlyarologist/gifts).



The sunsets are beautiful. It’s a small comfort that some things are the same, even millions of years in the past. 150 million years to be precise. Give or take a few million years and he has become a very giving person recently.

She had reprimanded him -once upon a time, twenty years ago and a million years in the future- when he had forgotten his mother’s birthday by a few days. Don’t forget humans over your work, she had said and he had agreed.

What would she say now, he wonders, about his centuries not just slipping into millennials but rather into eons.

A scream comes from above and he is abruptly pulled out of his thoughts. Night, he suddenly realizes, has started falling and with night comes the danger. The days, they are dangerous too, every second spent here in this land before time is danger. But the nights, those are especially dangerous. Quickly he stands up and starts walking, not wasting time looking behind or above him.

He has set up camp down the mountain, in a cave hidden behind a few bushes, with leaves too big and too unfamiliar. Probably he has been lucky all things considered, even when it’s hard to see it that way.

He could have crashed straight into a volcano instead. Could have landed close to the mouth of something with too many sharp teeth. Or worse yet, could have gone even further back, before Earth had considered such novel ideas as breathable air and solid ground. Or further yet even but there are thoughts too scary to consider, even now, even here.

Something screeches above him again, an ungodly and unholy sound straight from hell, and he quickens his steps. The cave, it isn’t save but it feels save at least. He can see the machine from there, in all its broken glory and desperate false promises of a way back home.

A life’s work for a life, he thinks almost bitterly, and what did he really achieve in the end in those fifteen years? Beside endless diagrams with bad calculations and worse dreams. Another noise and he breaks into a run, not daring to look behind him. It had been hunting him since the moment he had first landed here, having lost control over his own creation in the rubbery strings of time.

To be fair, he had crashed directly in the thing’s nest, - destroying several of its eggs in the process - but he rarely feels like being fair nowadays. It has been lurking around him ever since then, waiting and biding its time, inescapable with its wide wings, glimmering black in the daylight and appearing even darker at night.

Death at his doorstep, he thinks, though he doesn’t have a doorstep anymore. The stench of the tar pits grows stronger and he has to suppress the instinct to gag. He hasn’t quite gotten used to it yet, likely and hopefully never will.

There had been certain smells in his laboratory, but in his lab, the stench had meant progress, had meant the potential of future success, no matter how small. And still, no matter the stench, it had always been better than the rest of the house. Filled with nothing but memories, just faded lights and spaces growing colder with each passing day.

He’d have gladly frozen there in the dark, had he been sure he would be able to see her again afterwards. Hell, he’ll willingly feed himself to the damn pterodactyl if he can just…

Those thoughts vanish in an instance though when he catches sight of his machine. And the giant feet marching towards it.

“Damn it,” he mumbles and then he starts running even faster.

The Brachiosauruses don’t come up here normally. Too hilly, not enough leaves or trees, too close to the tar pits who care not for size or strength when they claim their prey.

From far away they are both beautiful and awful to behold, their giant size making some instinctual part of him want to cower and hide away. An ant staring up at the boot from below and from up close, their size is even more horrifying.

And they are close right now, too damn close to his machine for it not get damaged, but it’s not just his own life he fears for. So he runs towards it, mind racing as he tries to think of a way to save the machine.

It needs the sun to power up again. The only reason he had left it outside the cave, hoping desperately that the slowly increasing battery bar would win out over the elements, over creeping rust and inner despair. A race against time and all he could do was wait. The irony had not been lost on him.

But if the dinosaurs break it, no amount of time will be able to fix it again. He reaches the machine, breathless and legs shaking with exhaustion. No time to catch his breath though, he needs to get it inside, into the cave, to safety.

With all his strength he pulls at the machine. It does not move. He curses again, louder this time, and a few smaller lizards scramble away from him. Not used to the sounds he makes, a human voice instead of deep growls and screeching. He ignores them, tries again, desperately attempting to pull the machine into the cave.

It is stuck. It had been muddy when he had first come here. Misty and muddy and he had fallen into it face-first, tasting blood in his mouth. The taste of iron had spread when he had looked up and seen this strange world of giant trees and even more giant creatures.

The mud had dried over the months though. He had not noticed or had not cared but it had dried and now his machine is stuck in it. And from down the mountain, the dinosaurs keep coming closer.

He falls to his knees and starts digging. The dirt is hard, there are stones hurting his hands and he doesn’t care. Keeps digging and digging instead, his heart racing as fast as his mind. Beneath him the earth is strange and old but in his head, suddenly it seems familiar and fresh.

They had been nightmares at first. Those dreams where he had gone into the garden to her grave. They had become just dreams over the years until at one point he had started looking forward to them. Looked forward to kneeling at her grave and digging. And digging and digging until he had finally found her again underneath the earth.

And then he’d climb into the grave beside her and lay down. Close his eyes, hold her tight and they would be together again. In a way, he currently is digging too to make it come true.

But then the demon shrieks. The pterodactyl - and it is the same, he’d recognize even its bones at this point - flies straight towards him and it’s an animal in the end, driven by nothing but instinct. Same as the Brachiosauruses don’t care about him or his machine, only care that there is something in their way.

Only animals in the end, not devils, something whispers in his head. But as he locks eyes with the thing flying towards him, for a moment all he can think is that it had risen straight from hell, a demon sent to come and drag him down into it, he who had tried to cheat death.

Either way, it will kill him if he stays here. If he runs now, he can escape into the cave. Curl up inside of it, against the wall where he had scratched her name into the rock, close his eyes and think of her eyes and grave.

Stay and wait for death there because if he leaves now, the dinosaurs will break his machine.

An idea suddenly occurs to him and he stops digging. Tries instead to move the machine again. Pushing this time instead of pulling and it’s easier, the dirt he had dug up giving way, gravity and the slope of the mountain working in his favor.

It starts moving, moving away from the cave inch by inch but he has the math in his head, probably had finished the calculations hours after he had first arrived here.

Forward motion, kinetic energy, and if the sun alone won’t get him back home to her, this might. Or at least he hopes so.

The demon screams and it has almost reached him now but the machine has started moving on its own. A giant beak picks at him and eyes filled with pure hate bore into his, as with a final push the machine starts rolling down the mountain. He manages to avoid the beak somehow, jumps onto the machine and holds on for dear life as it picks up more and more speed.

The demon comes after him, wings tangled briefly by the sudden change of direction, but he is too busy punching buttons on the control panel to care.

The battery bar is increasing, faster now, faster than it had done with just the sun but below him are the pits of tar getting closer and closer and behind him is the flying demon.

And with the machine, there is the question of where he will end up. And when. He knows why he hadn’t done this earlier. Knows why he had hidden in the cave, watched a sheer endless amount of beautiful sunsets in this horrifying world.

At least there is air here, some part of him had whispered. At least there is water and food and solid ground.

At least time exists. What would you have done, he had thought, if you had truly crashed in a time before time? Can you long for a single morning in May when there is no such things as months or days or even seconds anymore?

Can you die if time hasn’t started existing yet? He fears and hates death so much he had spent fifteen years of his life trying to reverse it. But really, wasn’t the worse option a deathless eternity for him and the garden grave for her?

An eternity spent with only the memory of holding her close in their bed.

But the battery is fully charged now and there is certain death if he stays here either way, from the demon now or in the cave later. And flipping on the circuits he thinks that this way at least, there is the possibility of bringing her back, undoing time’s mistake.

The chance to see her again, if even just to watch her breath one last time.

The portal glows and the last thing he hears is the demon shrieking behind him before it all disappears.


End file.
